Word: putin
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...Bush?s announcement appears calculated to sweat Russia into modifying the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, which currently forbids national missile defense systems. Washington and Moscow have been locked in debate over amending the treaty ever since Presidents Bush and Putin met in May, but despite pressure from the White House, the Russians remain firmly opposed to tampering with the ABM pact. By threatening to withdraw, President Bush is calling Moscow's bluff - in hopes of reaching some form of agreement before Putin comes to Texas in November...
...Moscow is no longer a superpower, and certainly has few strategic cards to play. But President Putin is no slouch at playing Russia's limited hand to maximum diplomatic advantage. And while Moscow's experts don't believe the comprehensive missile defense scheme envisaged by President Bush is technologically feasible to the point of neutralizing even the "rogue" threat, let alone Russia's own nuclear deterrent, the Russians? skillful management of European concerns over treaties and a new arms race suggests they'll look to make maximum political and diplomatic gains from the controversy...
...Putin's gambit...
...Long before Bush came into office, Putin had convinced much of Western Europe that missile defense was a dangerously misguided project, particularly because it would abrogate the ABM treaty that formed the cornerstone of all nuclear arms-control agreements between Washington and Moscow. And although President Bush managed to shift European thinking from whether to how the U.S. would deploy a missile defense system, the focus of that "how" was still fixed on treaties and international consensus. The reason the Bush administration is "consulting" Russia is that approval of missile defense - by constituencies ranging from European NATO members...
...Bush knows the level of support for missile defense, even in the U.S. Senate, might fall off appreciably if it meant abandoning the existing framework of arms-control between the two major nuclear powers and not replacing it with an updated set of treaties. And that gives Putin some room to maneuver...